Mr. Kingsley has recently published a little book called "Phaethon; or, Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers."[1] The name will not, perhaps, recommend it to those who only regard his previous writings as "Free Thoughts for Free Thinkers." Yet it is much more of a conservative and anti-revolutionary character than his earlier works—less imbued with Carlylism, and more definitely hostile to the Emerson doctrinaires. It has a more decided air of adherence to established creeds and systems, a deeper voice of religious conviction, a firmer hold of positivism in the philosophy of the Church. Nevertheless, it id sufficiently pervaded by the old leaven to make it suspicious to those who were distrastful of yore. There is too frank, and feeling, and favourable a presentment of scepticism in the person of one of the interlocutors to be otherwise than distasteful, if not alarming, to persons of what Charles Lamb calls "imperfect sympathies.” That an accomplished, and influential, and earnest clergyman should so cordially appreciate and so faithfully delineate the mind of the doubter, is to them an afflictive, an ominous thought. Grant that his book is designed to relieve doubt, to confute scepticism, to remedy modern unbelief; still the uneasy conviction remains, that he has a very exceptionable and new-fangled way of doing so. The very straws which he scatters before him, and which show which way the wind lies, seem to refer it to an ugly quarter—and in a day fruitful of hot controversy, when there needs but a spark to kindle a "great matter," men have their misgivings aroused by the faintest "blast of vain doctrine," come whence it may. As Sainte Beuve says, "Quand la paille sèche jonche les rues et tourbillonne au gré du vent, il y a à prendre garde aux moindres étincelles, même quand l'étincelle jaillirait d'un foyer sacré." And by speaking of Mr. Kingsley as somewhat more "conservative" and moderate in his present performance, we do uot imply his retraction of those principles, or, indeed, of that general tone which have made him obnoxious in many quarters. He is more opposed to certain ultra-teachers among the so-called spiritualists. But he continues, to all appearance, steadfast in his own characteristic creed. His zealous philanthropy is unquestionable, his perception of social sufferings keen and practical. And less
Than other intellects as his been used
To lean upon extrinsic circumstance
Of record or tradition; but a sense
Of what in our Great Cites has been done
And suffered, and is doing, suffering, still,
Weighs with him.
He seems to have that sense, or inward prophecy. which—it has been said—a young man had better never have been born than not to have, and a mature man had better die at once than utterly relinquish—"that we are not doomed to creep on for ever in the old, bad way, but that, this very now, there are the harbingers abroad of a golden era." To his ear there is solemn, sweet, and not mere dreamy music in the chimes which are already heard, by some, to ring out the false, and ring in the true, to ring out the feuds of class interests and "ancient forms of party strife"—
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
- ↑ Cambridge: Macmillan.
